Title

Pyrmont and city

Artist

Kevin Connor

About

'Pyrmont and the city' is the culmination of numerous smaller plein air drawings in ink and gouache of Pyrmont, an inner suburb of Sydney, which has provided fertile subject matter for Connor since the early 1980s.

The drawing shows the area before it was developed, changing in character from semi-industrial to residential, with modern apartment blocks, a casino and recreation areas. ‘It was a wilderness – abandoned old buildings, grass, old stairways and the old railway’ (Kevin Connor, 2003). It also represented a new development in Connor’s oeuvre in the use of white gouache with ink, which accounts for its painterly nature. A second related drawing, 'Pyrmont (view to Blackwattle Bay)' 1992 is also in the Gallery’s collection.

This work won the Dobell Prize for Drawing in 1993 and was acquired by the Gallery in 1993.